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Index for this page...(Be aware some links below may have expired.)
All The Following Items Were Posted On August 1, 2006 Aristotle (384-322 BC) was the first great empirical thinker in the western tradition. He developed theories about motion, ethics, happiness, esthetics, politics, an Unmoved Mover, and much more; he lays the foundations of virtually all the sciences; and he creates a coherent empirical worldview that influences Western thought for the next two millennia. All students of philosophy should have a copy of The Basic Works of Aristotle in their own personal library. Comments by Aristotle:
Comments by others on Aristotle: "It was Plato who formulated most of philosophy's basic questions -- and doubts. It was Aristotle who laid the foundation for most of the answers." -- Ayn Rand "There is no future for the world except through a rebirth of the Aristotelian approach to philosophy. This would require an Aristotelian affirmation of the reality of existence, of the sovereignty of reason, of life on earth -- and of the splendor of man." -- Dr. Leonard Peikoff "There I beheld the Master of those who know..." -- Dante "His approach is remarkably sound, and no other ancient philosopher has so scrupulously and with such consistent purpose tried to free himself from prejudices and reach the truth." -- Ingemar Düring "Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history. Whenever his influence has dominated the scene, it paved the way for one of history's brilliant eras; whenever it fell, so did mankind." -- Ayn Rand "All in all, the History of Animals is Aristotle's supreme work, and the greatest scientific product of fourth-century Greece." -- Will Durant "Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere schoolboys compared to old Aristotle." Charles Darwin Source: Volume 1 of The Wisdom Seekers: Great Philosophers of the Western World, by James L. Christian. If you want an excellent and comprehensive history of philosophy, the two volumes in this set are among the best available. And I'm not just saying that because Professor Christian is a personal friend. I used his introductory textbook in philosophy when I was teaching an introduction to philosophy course many years ago. J.D. Read about Aristotle (384-322 BC) in The Radical Academy.
FOR THE RECORD 1. Atlas Shrugged Movie: A Triology Starring Angelina Jolie? After decades of false starts and disappointments, plans are quickly coming together for a major Hollywood film version of Ayn Rand's seminal individualist novel Atlas Shrugged. A deal has been signed. A major studio is producing it. Funding has been secured. A script has been drafted. Major stars are eagerly seeking the roles -- including Academy Award-winning actress Angelina Jolie, who very much wants the lead role of Dagny Taggart. Further: plans are for it to be shot as a "trilogy"! Some background: The novel Atlas Shrugged played a major role in the formation of the modern libertarian movement (although Rand never called herself a libertarian and was critical of what she perceived as libertarianism). Rand's complex, epic and controversial novel is, among other things, a thriller, a romance, and an uncompromising philosophical defense of personal and economic liberty and individualism. The book has been a publishing phenomenon since its publication in 1957. It has never been out of print in hardback and has sold millions of copies worldwide. A 1999 Modern Library reader survey ranked it as the number one book published in the 20th century. In 1991, the Library of Congress commissioned a nationwide survey seeking books that changed the lives of their readers. First was the Bible; second was Atlas Shrugged. So what's the latest on this eagerly anticipated movie? According to Robert Bidinotto, editor of the New Individualist magazine, published by The Objectivist Center:
So when can we hope to see it? Says Bidinotto: "The next step in the production is hiring the right director. [Executive producers] mentioned several candidates, but expect that search to be over by the fall. Once a director is announced ... production will accelerate at a very rapid pace. Expectations are that the rest of the casting and the filming would take place in 2007, the fiftieth anniversary of the novel. While they would love to release the film next year to coincide with the anniversary, they believe it is more likely it will be released in 2008." Summarizes Bidinotto: "It looks like this grand tale will be made, at long last; and more important, it looks as if everyone connected with the production is dedicated to doing it right." Source: For more information, see Robert Bidinotto's blog: http://bidinotto.journalspace.com/?entryid=416 2. U.S. Drug War Plague: Paramilitary Police Raids As many as 40,000 times per year, American homes are raided by paramilitary police forces dressed and armed as soldiers, according to a shocking new study by the libertarian Cato Institute. That's an incredible 1,300 percent increase over the past 25 years. And the vast majority of these home invasions are to serve routine drug warrants, including for offenses as trivial as marijuana possession. Furthermore, innocent bystanders are terrified, threatened, and sometimes even killed in these raids. "These raids ... are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they're sleeping," writes Cato policy analyst Radley Balko, "usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as peace officers, but as soldiers." "Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America" is the name of the study. The book-length document provides a legal, historical, and policy background of how this disaster evolved. Balko examines the dangers of "no-knock" and "short-notice" raids, explains how such confrontational tactics cause violence rather than lessening risks, and offers recommendations for reform. "Overkill" includes an appendix of nearly 150 examples of documented botched raids, including: the case of Alberto Sepulveda, an 11-year-old boy shot in the head during a bungled raid in Modesto, California; Clayton Helriggle, a 23-year-old shot and killed when an inexperienced SWAT team raided a house of college-aged men guilty of recreational marijuana use; Sal Culosi, an optometrist in Fairfax, Virginia mistakenly killed by a SWAT team that had come to his home to arrest him for betting on sports games; and Mississippi police officer Ron Jones, shot and killed when Cory Maye, a man asleep at home with his daughter and who had no criminal record, mistook Jones' raid team for criminal intruders. Furthermore, Balko has found more than three dozen examples of completely innocent people killed in mistaken raids; twenty cases of nonviolent offenders who've been killed; and more than a dozen cases of police officers killed by suspects or mistakenly targeted civilians who thought the police were criminal intruders. These raids, writes Balko, "bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty only of misdemeanors; they terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence; and they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects." If you don't think this can happen to you, or your family, regardless of whether you're innocent or not, this study proves it can. Cato has also released an interactive Google Maps application that plots nearly 300 examples of mistaken raids since the mid-1980s. Users can zoom in to street level, and sort raids by their end result (death of an innocent, death of a police officer, etc.), and the year of the raid. The map is available at http://www.cato.org/raidmap Source: Cato Institute press release. The full text of "Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America" is available online: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6476 Courtesy: Advocates for Self-Government 3. Hollywood Is Tanking According To Hollywood Confidential Last year at Hollywood Confidential we spent a lot of time discussing what a lousy year Hollywood was having at the box-office. 2006 hasn't been much better, and now the chickens are coming home to roost. The LA Times published an article this week, "As Layoffs Sweep Movie Studios, Hollywood Fears for Its Future," in the wake of Disney laying off 20 percent of its workforce, about how the Hollywood economy is tanking. It's a long article and we recommend reading it, in large part because it runs counter to the endlessly misleading boosterism we've all been getting from the entertainment press with respect to Hollywood's finances. And even the LA Times article begins with the line: "Never mind that movie ticket sales are picking up and that 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest' could become the biggest hit in motion picture history." Biggest hit in motion picture history? It's not even obvious "Pirates" is going to match "The Da Vinci Code's" worldwide gross this year, or "Revenge of the Sith's" domestic gross from last year. And incidentally, none of this takes into account ticket price inflation. Adjusted for inflation, the biggest hit ever is still (by far) 1939's "Gone With the Wind," which would make almost $1.3 billion at today's domestic box office. Adjusted for inflation, "Pirates 2" is hovering around No. 63 all-time right now, and hasn't even made as much money as "Back to the Future" yet. But again, this is the fog of publicity the town has been putting out about itself to cloud the obvious: Hollywood's in trouble. So why would Hollywood and its product have fallen into such disfavor? One can't blame this entire problem on DVD release windows, piracy, obnoxious teenagers with cell phones in multiplexes, or any of the other glib reasons the entertainment press has been giving. As we've said here before: Eventually the industry needs to look at movie content itself, and at the vision of the world Hollywood is putting out in its films and through its celebrity activism. Source: Hollywood Confidential 4. Dean Battles Hillary For Party Control We informed our long-time Insider Report readers that the real battle for Hillary Clinton in her quest for the White House will not be with conservative Republicans but leading members of her own party. In fact, we named the so-called "Gang of Four" who have joined in a blood pact to stop Hillary no matter what. The members of the anti-Hillary gang: Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Al Gore, and Howard Dean. Apparently, the liberal media couldn't ignore this story any longer. The liberal New Republic recently reported that National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and Sen. Hillary Clinton, are locked in a battle for supremacy within their party. Dean supporters are unhappy with Clinton's stand on Iraq and her cautious shift to the center, while at the same time they fear she is too polarizing to win a general election. Clinton supporters question Dean's competence in managing the DNC and believe his left-wing positions will turn off middle- and working-class voters. The New Republic calls it "Hillary Clinton v. Howard Dean &endash; The Grudge." "The schism between the two camps has its roots in Dean's early 2003 discovery that running against Clintonism held a lot of appeal for Democratic primary voters," Thomas B. Edsall writes in The New Republic. "Many liberals were hungry for a politician who would tell them what they wanted to hear on Iraq, gay rights, and the role of religion in American life &endash; and just as importantly, one who would denounce Democratic triangulators, equivocators, and compromisers." Later that year, Clinton struck back by launching a behind-the-scenes campaign to pressure fellow Democrats not to support Dean, who by then was the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president. As NewsMax reported at the time, Clinton aides began contacting party movers and shakers in a bid to discredit Dean and dispel the notion that he had the nomination sewn up. As the split between Dean and Clinton widened after the 2004 election, Dean allies steadily attacked Hillary in the blogosphere. Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos called Clinton "a heartless, passionless machine, surrounded by the very people who ground down the activist base in the 1990s and have continued to hold the party's grass roots in utter contempt." As NewsMax reported, soon after the election, the Gang of Four teamed up to elect Dean to head the DNC. Kerry even poured millions from his excess campaign funds to cement Dean's position there. Now, the gulf between the two camps has become so deep that Clinton is formulating a strategy to circumvent the DNC if she wins the Democratic Party's nomination. "We are going to have our own field staff, starting way before the primaries begin, right through Nov. 7," a Clinton strategist told Edsall. Thanks to Clinton's war chest &endash; she already has $22 million in the bank that could be used in a presidential run &endash; she is prepared to reject public financing during the primaries and general election, according to Edsall. This would enable her campaign to keep the field staff from the primaries on her payroll during the general election instead of shifting it to the DNC, as previous candidates have done. Also, NewsMax reported in March that longtime Clinton aide Harold Ickes was launching a massive data mining project in a bid to get the Democratic vote out in 2006 and 2008 - a direct snub to Dean, whose job it is to run his party's turnout machine. "So who will win the showdown between Howard and Hillary? In both the long term and short term, the odds favor Clinton and her allies in the party's more moderate wing," Edsall writes. Dean supporters will likely be unable to come together behind a single candidate, he adds, while "there is probably only one candidate Dean could ever truly back, and he is sitting out this race." That candidate is Howard Dean. Source: Insider Report "The Census Bureau revealed today that Las Vegas is about to pass Washington, D.C. in population. The big difference between Las Vegas and D.C., of course, is that in Las Vegas people gamble with their own money." -- Jay Leno, "The Tonight Show."
COUNSELING CORNER: Murphy's Lesser-Known Dictums . . .
A LITTLE OF THIS & A LITTLE OF THAT A Little Wisdom: The road to success is lined with many tempting parking spaces. A Little Advice: Remember the three R's -- Respect for self; Respect for others; Responsibility for all your actions. A Little Question: Is it possible to be totally partial? A Little Put-Down: Sometimes I need what only you can provide -- your absence. A Little Proverb: Plan ahead. It wasn't raining when Noah built the Ark. A Little Reflection: Nobody believes the official spokesman . . . but everybody trusts an unidentified source. A Little Observation: Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it. A Little Quote: "Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music." -- George Carlin A Little Definition: Expansion Slots - The extra holes in your belt buckle. A Little Quip: Give me ambiguity or give me something else. A Little Politics: Democrat - "Give us your money. We'll solve your problems."; Republican - "Give us your money. We'll ignore your problems."; Libertarian - "Keep your money. Solve your own problems."
Some interesting & provocative articles on other websites: How To Achieve Liberty: Bypass, Educate and Secede, by Manuel Lora and Juan Fernando Carpio: It is hard to be a libertarian and stay positive. The inexorable advance of government intrusions into our lives, and, consequently, the drastic reduction of our freedoms, seems to grow on a daily basis. CleanFlicks v. Kate Winslet's Breasts - How Hollywood won a lawsuit while losing a cultural battle, by Nick Gillespie: Welcome to the landmark legal case of CleanFlicks et al. v. Kate Winslet's Titanic Breasts. Keeping promises matters - even in politics, by Peter Coghlan: It would be easy to laugh off the conflict between John Howard and Peter Costello as just another example of the games politicians play. Too easy, in fact. For underlying the high drama are some important issues of political morality. We need teachers, not amateur therapists, by Frank Furedi: It was revealed at the weekend that some British state schools will pilot 'happiness lessons' for 11-year-olds, using cognitive therapy techniques and role play to tackle depression and negative thinking among the nation's children. This is more likely to harm children than help them. AI Reaches the Golden Years, by David Cohn: Artificial intelligence is 50 years old this summer, and while computers can beat the world's best chess players, we still can't get them to think like a 4-year-old. Big Brother Prescribes - Are mandatory aerobics classes in your future?, by Ronald Bailey: New York's diabetic surveillance program could be the harbinger for similar mandatory programs for monitoring everyone's serum cholesterol, hypertension, and even percentage of body fat. Appeasing a Mortal Enemy - The U.S.-Israeli Suicide Pact, by Elan Journo: The Iran-Hamas-Hezbollah axis is fully responsible for initiating the war on Israel, but the Islamists' aggression is the logical product of U.S.-Israeli policy. The longstanding commitment of Israel and America to "diplomatic engagement" with Palestinians and Islamists--a euphemism for appeasement--is suicidal. Feeding homeless outlawed: If someone looks like he could use a meal, be warned: Giving him a sandwich in a Las Vegas park could land you in jail. The Las Vegas City Council passed an ordinance Wednesday that bans providing food or meals to the indigent for free or a nominal fee in parks. Military club fined for violating smoking ban, by Warren King: A downtown Everett club catering to active and former military personnel has been fined for repeated violations of the state smoking ban. Snohomish County Superior Court ordered Fleet Reserve Association Branch 170 to pay $1,024 in civil fines and legal fees for allowing patrons to smoke in the club, even after warnings by the Snohomish Health District. Children - over-surveilled, under-protected, by Jennie Bristow: A recent conference in London highlighted the dangers of the government's insidious monitoring of our children's lives. Grandma is an outlaw, by Henry Lamb: She didn't kill anyone. She didn't rob a bank. In fact, she didn't commit any illegal act. It's what she didn't do that made her an outlaw. We'll call her "Sally" - so the jack-boots can't track her down. Bet On Handcuffs - The long arm of American paternalism, by Jacob Sullum: Although they supposedly speak English in England, they have different names for certain things. When they say "lift," they mean "elevator." "Lorry" is their word for "truck." And someone they call a "businessman" is what we call a "racketeer." Viagra for the United Nations, by Bill O'Reilly: The United Nations is impotent. That's the only diagnosis an objective person can arrive at if you look at the facts. Time and time again, the United Nations has been called upon to protect innocent people and has failed.
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